


My Father's Son

by haeresitic



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Moon Knight (Comics)
Genre: AU, Allusions to Child Abuse, Family Drama, Gen, bad parenting w
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haeresitic/pseuds/haeresitic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Boxing AU] Matt Murdock is 18, fearless, and sick of playing the weak helpless one. Marc Spector is 18, aimless, and sick of being a failure of a son. You can either find or lose yourself in fighting. Any of it is a good deal for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> An AU where the teenagers who would one day grow up into Daredevil and Moon Knight are still living with their fathers and dealing with the burden of being their fathers' sons.

It’s not the sudden flooding of the morning sun into the room that wakes Matt up; he’s blind after all. It’s his father’s heavy steps on the creaking floorboard to part the curtains in his room as he always does every morning that shake him awake. It’s also his father’s sharp cologne rushing into the room, chased by the milky smell of fresh pancakes and the lazily drifting scent of black coffee. It’s also New York, with its symphonic cacophony of the morning rush hour that pierces his ear drums when his father yanks his headphones off his head.

“You shouldn’t sleep with this on, Matt,” says Jack Murdock, “it’s bad for your ears.” He tosses the headphone onto the desk and the iPod attached to it flies out from its nest under Matt’s pillow. A sleepy but nimble hand catches it in mid-air.

“Nice.”

Matt mumbles an incoherent reply and shuffles out of his room.

“What’d you got planned today, eh, son?” asks Jack as they have their breakfast. “You want some syrup with that?”

“I’ve got it.” He reaches for the second bottle to his right that smells sticky and sweet (his dad must have been up late last night eating chips, because their bottle of salsa—tomatoes, onion, way too much preservatives—is still here on the table).

“So, plans?”

He squirts little dots of syrup across his pancakes. He can’t have them too sweet, no, the syrup too easily overwhelms his taste buds. “I guess I’m just gonna continue listening to my books. And maybe I’ll take a walk in the park to get some fresh air.”

A small sigh. Matt knows his father’s sighs, and this one is his I’m-already-worried-but-I-shouldn’t-be-he-wouldn’t-like-it-if-he-knows-I’m-worrying sigh. “Well, don’t go out too late, and not when the traffic’s heavy, and—” He checks himself, sighs that sigh again. “Oh hey, good news, I asked the landlady again about us gettin’ a dog, and guess how much it takes to miraculously cure her allergy, eh?”

The pancake is fluffy on the inside, crispy on the outside. Matt loves it; he lives for textures, in his mouth, under his fingertips, against his ear drums. “Mhmmm,” he says, swallowing his food, “Dad, I told you, I don’t need a guide dog.” He almost chokes from just imagining the smell he would have to live with.

“I didn’t say we gotta get a guide dog, Matty.” That sigh again. “Dogs are a great company, imagine having one to walk with in the streets, eh, imagine a big great dog, like that Doberman kind. No one’s gonna dare mess with you!”

Matt reaches across their little table and finds his dad’s cheek. His fingers brush against the stiff bristles of his beard—he wonders if it’s still as red as ever, or if it’s got a few grays in them now, just like his hair the last time he saw it? He remembers the crooked nose, broken too many times in too many matches. He remembers the heavy-lidded eyes, not from genetics, but from swelling up too many times in too many matches. He remembers the love in those eyes. The love and worry and hope. Now he sees them under his fingertips, for they have been etched deep into the wrinkles of his dad’s face.

“No one dares, Dad.”

His hand moves up and down on his father’s face as Jack releases yet another of that sigh again.

This is what mornings are like in the Murdocks’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the mornings are like in the Spectors’.

The toast is still too hot to touch when Marc puts them in his mouth and dashes out of the flat. He can’t be bothered to wait for the old elevator to climb up to the seventh floor; he skips past the fire hazards building up in the common corridor and practically slides down the fire exit. He finally pauses to take his first proper breath in the morning, here in an alleyway beside a dumpster, with a rapidly cooling toast in his mouth.

“Marc!”

He shields his eyes and look up. Randall is peeking out of his room’s window, sunlight trapped among his golden tufts of bed hair (he’s going to lose the blondeness soon. Marc did around his age—just before his bar mitzvah, to be exact). “Where you goin’?”

“I dunno.”

“Can I come with?”

“No.”

“No fair!”

“Be a good boy and stay home.”

“You be a good boy and stay home!”

Marc’s eyes are watering from looking up into the light. He turns to his shoes instead.

“Come oooon, Marky, we can play sumthin’ together!”

A cloud has just lazily floated past the sun and Marc is able to glare straight into Randall’s eyes. “Keep quiet, Rand, you don’t want Mrs Goldberg complaining to Dad about your noises again!”

A whimper. And then a whisper that the wind carries down to him. “What do I tell Dad?”

“Nothing. Just don’t remind him of me and it’ll be fine.”

Randall will continue talking unless he leaves, so Marc does just that. He lets the rush hour crowd carry him for a while as he chomps at his toast and ponders as to his destination. One year—that’s the deal he’s made with his dad: if after a year he can’t find what he wants to do for life, he’s going to plunge headfirst into student loan to get that college degree his dad treasures so much. They shook on that deal like gentlemen. He can still feel his dad’s firm tight grip over his hand. He can still see his dad’s little solemn nod before they parted hands.

That was a month ago.

You’re not doing too shabby, he reminds himself. You’ve got a job! (As a part-time janitor in a small community theatre, yes, and it makes up for its lack of benefits with … a free uniform). And it was payday yesterday, and here’s your hard-earned money, right here in your pockets, right here, clutched in your fingers.

It’s an investment. That’s how people get rich. This money he’s clutching in his fingers in his pockets, this is his future, the seeds of his future. It’s an investment.

He finds his way there very easily. New York is new and spectacular and strange but it’s still a city, just like Chicago, and he knows how to work cities. Now he’s in front of a man with graying red hair and fierce red beard, and a big strong body of muscles that have been built up for years and have rapidly broken down into fat upon a sudden drop in training rigour.

There’s an Irish twang in his voice. “What’re you here for?”

Marc takes out the money and places them on the counter, on top of his application form. “I want to be a fighter.”

The man looks him up and down. “Easy words to say, sonny.”

“I need to be a fighter.”

The man sweeps the money to the side and brings the application form closer to his face. His eyebrows furrow. “Says here you’re 18, Spector, innit? You goin’ to school?”

A voice calls out from under the table: “Jack, mind yer own business. Anyone wants to train for whatever reason he pays the same fee.” A skinnier man unfolds himself into his height carrying a box of gloves and pads. “Don’t mind him, boyo, you go right to the lockers and get changed. We’re gonna start soon.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“That was fantastic!”

“It was just a sparring match, don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Spector, tell me m’boy, you ever fight before?”

“Kenny, let him breathe, give him space, Jesus. Go check if Bobby’s okay instead!”

Marc spits out his mouth piece and squeezes water from his bottle into his mouth, and then all over his face. He grabs one of his gloves with his teeth, rips the Velcro strap open and shakes his hand out of his glove so he can run it down his face.

“I … toldja…” replies Marc in between pants, “… boxed since … a kid. I know… am good… know what I want…”

“I believe ya, kid. Ol’ Kenny knows what’s good when he sees it.”

Marc leans his back against the ropes and then stretches down. He can see Jack pulling Kenny away from the ring and gesturing at him. I know what you’re up to, he can hear Jack whisper furiously, he’s been here a week, Kenny, you don’t get to—

Jack catches him looking at them, so he pulls Kenny further away, out of his earshot.

“Wanna know what they’re talking about?”

Marc looks up. A ginger’s standing beside the ropes. He’s wearing shades. Must be one of those hipsters, he thinks, even Hell’s Kitchen’s still got them.

Despite himself, he engages him. “Me. They’re talking about me.”

The ginger leans forward. “Depends.  Are you Spector?”

Marc narrows his eyes. He strains his ears again, but he can’t catch anything. “How are you doing that?”

The ginger holds a finger to his lips and continues in a bad imitation of Kenny’s voice. “He’s not Matt, Jack, he’s not yours to mother. He says he wanna fight, we let him.”

“Who’s Matt?”

“I’m Matt. Sssshhh. I know kids like Spector, they think they can fight their way outta here, they’re desperate enough to believe that. We don’t stand here and let them fool themselves, Kenny.” He switches pitch. “God damn it, Jack, get off your damn high pedestal and think of us, think of the gym, think of Matt!”

“Matt!”

They turn around to see Jack and Kenny making their way back to the ring. “Told you not to get up to the ring, it’s difficult to get down from there,” says Kenny, reaching out for the ginger’s hand.

He waves it away. It’s then when Marc realises that he’s kept one hand behind his back all this while and in that hand is a blind man’s cane. Matt sweeps the end of the platform and leans down to reach the bottom with his cane. When he steps off he does it so easily and casually it makes his earlier demonstration of tapping and sweeping seem arbitrary to Marc, who has seen his share of bad theatrics in his job. It’s not really the question as to whether he’s playing blind that intrigues Marc—guy seems like he loathes to play the part too, so why do it?  

“Ah,” says Jack, “Marc, this is my son, Matt. Matt, Marc. Matt sometimes pops by to bring me stuff because I’m a real clunkhead. What will I do when he goes to Columbia in August, eh?”

There’s an inflection of pride in his tone that Marc knows Jack didn’t consciously inject. He feels something cold and heavy sinking in his stomach. When he goes home tonight he will hear only inflections of disappointment in his father’s tone that he knows he didn’t mean to inject. He watches Jack putting his hand on Matt’s shoulder and notices that his shoelaces have come undone.

“I’m almost done here, Matty, we can go back together.”

He meets Jack’s eyes when he looks up from his shoes. “You can come for the pro sessions from now on. This doesn’t mean anything; just means you’re good, and you can take it to the next level.”

He sees Kenny giving him a thumbs-up behind Jack. This is really happening, this is really happening! He takes off his other glove and tries very hard not to skip to his locker, although he’s still walking really fast and the handwrap he’s shedding flies behind him like a banner. He can’t wait to see Rand’s face when he tells him—he can already see his eyes as wide as his toothy gasp, wowee Marc, he’d say in awe, wowee, does that mean you’re gonna be on TV soon? And then there’d be a knock on the door, it’d be their dad getting home from tending the flock; Randall would fly to the door, shouting, daddy daddy guess what guess what, and Mrs Rosenberg would be screaming keep it down you uncultured twerp keep it the fuck down, and his dad would—

He lets the handwraps slither onto the floor and curl in front of his feet. He can’t tell anyone. Not yet, not for now. He’s still got 11 months (ish), and he’s good, isn’t he, that’s what Kenny and Jack kept saying. He’d win big trophies, get on TV, and get a lot of money. Then he’d tell Rand. And let Rand tell Dad, and Dad would—

He catches a glimpse of the Murdocks as they exit the gym. He wonders why he didn’t realise before that Matt’s hair is the same exact fiery shade as his dad’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After his dad leaves for work Matt climbs up to the roof of their building and stands on the ledge. He throws his cane aside, he takes off his shades. He can’t see them but he looks for them anyway, he knows they’re there, those insect-sized humans scurrying about beneath him.

He can hear each of their footsteps. Together it’s as loud as thunder to him, a thunder that never stops rumbling. That’s New York City—it’s a storm. He soaks himself in it. Feels it on his skin. Sticky dense smog hot greasy hotdogs piss and beer flowing as one cheap perfume expensive perfume proper coffee bad coffee fresh photocopies fresh printed cash crumpled crinkled cash that has the city’s entire smell on it

His phone vibrates. He takes it out and puts on his ear buds. Might pass library, want anything? Tell me Braille or audio. Love you. Dad. He smiles and tucks his phone and ear buds neatly into his pocket. He squats, back facing the city, picks up his cane. He leans back, spread-eagled into the embrace of gravity.

Their building is only six stories high; he’s not relying on his radar sense as much as his own muscle memory for knowing in which split of a second after he falls he should spin so that his feet would face the asphalt; know how long after that to take his cane in two hands above his head; knowing how much force he should steel his shoulders for when the both ends of his cane hit the metal rails of the balconies of the second floor with a loud clang; how much he should swing so that he can gracefully land on the ground with two firm, unshaking feet.

He does rely on his radar sense to tell him that a bulky figure is approaching and lifting the window closest to him. When Mr Gaurav looks out, he sees young Matthew Murdock in his shades serenely tapping his way into the entrance of the building.

“I thought those damn vandals were back, I was about to call the police, making such noises so early in the morning—”

“It’s almost 11, Mr Gaurav.”

“Some of us work nights, boy. You didn’t see the-the-ah, I meant, I didn’t mean…” A pause. “Do you need help with…” Radar sense tells him Mr Gaurav is gesturing lamely at the French doors in front of him.

“Don’t worry about it. Have a good rest, Mr Gaurav.”

His phone vibrates again when he’s in the flat. The vibrations persist after the initial two bursts—it’s a call.

“Hey dad, yeah, I’m home. It’s the turkey sandwich? I’ve got it. Sure, I’m in the kitchen” (he’s not) “Your key’s here, it’s on your dresser. I uh, stumbled upon it earlier on” (he didn’t) “Don’t worry about the books, I can get them myself. See you in a bit.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt should be the last person who’d want to enter a small airless boxing gym in the middle of a summer day. But he doesn’t mind that sour smell of stale sweat in fraying damp leather that permeates a gym; how could he, he grew up surrounded by it, and when he went blind, he associated that smell with his dad (it’s there, skimming his skin just under his aftershave and cologne), more than his heartbeat, more than his voice, it was what he used to find him in the darkness.

A class has just finished when he arrives. People are picking themselves up from the mat after their cool-down 300 abdominal exercises with Kenny watching them. Radar sense penetrates through the plasterboard wall and easily finds his dad’s silhouette in the little room he and Kenny call an office; his ears tell him he’s flipping through a stack of papers; his nose tells him he’s sweating, but not from the heat or the stuffiness of the gym.

Jack only realises Matt’s arrival when he puts his key and the bag of sandwich in front of him, on a spot empty of papers. He makes to stash whatever he’s holding under a folder, but he stops and takes his lunch instead.

“Thanks, Matty. Aren’t you teaching in the centre today?”

“Yeah, but that’s later in the evening,” replies Matt. He sticks his hands into his pocket, his cane hanging from the strap around his right wrist. “Dad, are you okay?”

Jack’s sigh, in which Matt’s well-versed in, contradicts his answer. “Swell. Now run along, your old man would like some private time with his lunch.”

Radar sense tells him his dad’s still not eating ten minutes later—he’s still clutching the bag in one hand, and what is probably the same stack of paper in the other. Matt bites his lips. He punches the speed bag in front of him—on its third bounce back his restless hand punches it again. And again. And again and again.

He doesn’t really need his radar sense to tell him when someone’s staring at him from behind. He stops. His audience comes close, waves a hand in front of his face. He catches it.

“Yes, you’re being rude; yes, I’m blind; no, I don’t owe you any explanation.”

The heartbeat and the stature are familiar to him. He’s good with heartbeat and scents and silhouettes, but he’s not that good with names.

“Sorry,” his audience replies. A pause. “You’re Jack’s son. Matt.”

“Yeah. And you’re uh—”

“Sorry,” he says again, “sorry, I forgot the—Marc, Marc Spector.”

“The golden kid.”

He hears Marc’s heart skip a beat. “What?”

“That’s what Kenny calls you. He’s got it pretty bad for you, man.”

Marc lets out a short obligatory chuckle. “And Jack, does he say anything?”

His dad’s cradling his head in his hands. His lunch is still uneaten. “Nah, he doesn’t really talk about work with me.” He punches the speed bag again. “He wants me to be as far away from all these as possible. If he didn’t open his own gym and keeps forgetting his stuff he would never have let me set foot here.”

“That’s terrible.”

He catches the speed bag and leans against the wall it’s attached to. “It’s not, it’s… well, I get where he’s coming from. He wants the best for me, and he thinks fighting is not that.”

Marc throws his head to the side and makes an impatient noise. Matt’s guessed a long time ago that this movement is also often accompanied by a rolling of the eyes.

“Oh and don’t tell my dad about this.”

“‘This’?”

“Me punching a bag. Me punching a bag good. Don’t tell him that.”

Marc lets out a genuine chuckle this time. “Dude, that’s not how you work a speed bag; sorry, blind or not, what you did wasn’t anywhere near good.”

Matt pushes his cane into Marc’s hands and works the speed bag good for a minute.

“Don’t tell my dad.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was almost late for his job today thanks to Murdock Junior. He’d planned to grab lunch on the way to the theatre but he didn’t have time for that, and right now, back at home, he’s famished. He tries to ignore the hunger by reading his comic, but nothing is going in, so he flops the comic on his face and tries to sleep the hunger away. 

He doesn’t get up upon hearing the knock on the door. Randall scrambles to the TV set to turn it off (they lost the remote during the move from Chicago) and scurries to the door. It’s only when he hears his dad closing the door behind him and locking it that he slides off the sofa, stashes his comic under the cushion and drags himself to the dining room. Randall’s already zipping around their rectangular table putting placemats and plates and cutleries. Marc washes his hands, pours himself a glass of water and sits down on his usual spot at the narrow end of the table; Rand would sit beside his dad, the three of them forming a mirror image L.

His dad usually brings dinner home for them, and this is the case tonight. Randall sets the bread on a chopping board, but the rest of the food (they’re having Chinese today) stays in their Styrofoam boxes. Marc taps the table impatiently with his fork. “Sit down,” he hisses to his brother, who might place napkins on their laps or a bouquet on the centre of the table if he’s not stopped.

His dad returns from his room having changed out of his robes into a comfortable shirt. His hands are damp from the washing. He sits down and takes a slice of bread. Marc charges into the food. He shovels a pile of fried noodle onto his place and then dumps on it enough sweet and sour chicken to cover it. 

Unfortunately he catches his dad’s eyes. Elias Spector has stopped bothering to tire his vocal chords on rebuking his eldest son for years now, but he hasn’t stopped expressing his disapproval in other ways. One of these is his sharp stare which would abruptly end as he closes his eyes and does a little shake of the head, sometimes accompanied by a small dejected sigh.

Marc tries to hold his stare. He keeps forgetting that doesn’t work when his dad would look down and close his eyes and he’d be left half-standing over the food staring at a space off his dad’s ear. He shrinks back into his chair. Randall watches him, shrugs, and takes his food.

They eat quietly. They always do. Elbows are off the table; mouths are shut while chewing. Randall takes his time to chew; he’d put down his fork and look around the room, and then look back and forth between his brother and his father. Sometimes one of them would attempt a conversation. Most of the time this would be Randall.

Marc bites his lips. He opens them.

“Do you think it’s ridiculous that a boxer would stop his kid from fighting even as a sport?”

His dad looks up from his food. “No. He’d understand better than most what a bad life fighting for money is. That’s thuggery-for-money, Marcus, that’s like being a mercenary for peace times.”

“Maybe he’s just worried for his kid—he’s a friend, and he’s, uh, he’s got a delicate constituency.”

“It’s a bad life. Your friend’s father is a good man for stopping his son from following his footsteps.”

He’s a good man alright, Marc whispers to himself. He takes a sip of his water. He worries a lot, but in the end he’s a good man, and a good father. Maybe if Matt weren’t blind he’d let him fight. Tough luck, Matty-boy.

“Boxing’s really cool but that UFC thing is even cooler!” chimes in Randall. “You don’t just get to punch, you get to kick, and you get to wrestle. Why’d you wanna box when you can do all that, eh?”

His dad’s eyes narrow into a chilly glare. “What have you been letting your brother watch, Marc?”

Marc transfers the glare to Randall.

He eats fast, but he can’t leave the table until everyone is done and says their _zimmun_ together. He puts his chin on his thumbs and makes the points of his fingers meet at his nose level. There’s a faint smell of musty hand wraps and old boxing gloves on his skin (he borrows the gym’s since it’d save him money and the trouble of hiding them from his dad). He smiles and takes a deeper sniff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re gonna have a hard time explaining that to your dad.”

Marc frowns and shrugs Matt’s hand off his face. “Stop that,” he growls. He runs his own hand across his swollen eye and cringes. It’s not too bad. Even if it is, his dad wouldn’t say anything. There would be some staring, there would be some sighing, there would be some head shaking. But he would never say anything.

“You’re not Castle’s class yet, so don’t feel too bad about losing. In fact, you should be proud he didn’t manage to knock you out,” says Matt as he sits down under the speedbag.

Marc touches his eye again. He tells himself to stop it; his hands are still sweaty and wrapped and dirty. “Castle?”

Matt points accurately at his injured eye with his cane.

“How do you do that,” mutters Marc. “You know this Castle guy?”

“Frank Castle, yeah. He’s another Hell’s Kitchen boy. Keeps to himself mostly, but he beat up a few older kids when we were younger.”

“He’s a bully?”

“No, the older kids were the bullies.” Matt pauses. He props his chin on his knee. “He beat them up like they beat me up but—”

Marc waves his hand and then puts it back on his eye. “I get it, he was just… punishing them.” He clears his throat. “Do you still, uh, do people still, I mean, it’s pretty messed up, picking on a blind kid.”

“I don’t think the local boys would stoop that low. No, they stopped a little bit before my accident.”

“Castle scared them, huh?”

Matt’s laughing. When he speaks again he has a wide smile on his face. “They called me ‘Daredevil’. Must have thought it was funny ‘cause I was the bookworm of the neighbourhood, always hiding up in his room to study instead of playing or wrestling with the other boys. Must have thought it was funny when I trying to crawl away from their fists and kicks.  I don’t think they found it as funny when I stood up to them.”

“They backed down because you grew a set of balls?”

“They backed down because I repaid them in kind.” He sighs and cracks his knuckles. “Hey, Spector? Don’t tell my dad.”

Marc scratches his hair before returning his hand to his eye. “Wouldn’t your dad be proud of you if he knew you could fight?”

Matt’s still smiling, but it’s not as wide as before. “No,” he says, rubbing his cheek as if there’s a stain on it he’s trying to erase, “No, he wasn’t.”

He looks up. “So don’t remind him.”

Marc remembers the first time he went home, bruised and bloodied, but victorious from fighting the kids who had been throwing anti-Semitic chants and rocks and cans at him and Randall. Rand was freaking out at how his nose was bent at an unnatural angle, and at how blood kept pouring from a spot near his hairline, but he interspersed that with excited chattering, wowee, Marc, wowee, you sure showed ‘em, you were like a super-hee-roh, just wait until dad hear this! When they’d entered their flat their father was already sitting on the table with the food going cold. They didn’t eat dinner that night; he took him to the emergency ward to be stitched up and bandaged up. And then he was to read the Torah for the morning services for an entire week.

“Hey, have you heard about the upcoming meet in Queens? Kenny’s really egging on Dad to let you go, but after seeing Castle pummel you tonight, eh, he’s still quite on the fence about it.”

He punches his fist into his palm.  “Great, that’s great news, now all I gotta do is make sure I wipe the floor with Castle in the next sparring session and next stop: amateur debut.” His gloves are on the floor beside him and he picks them up.

“What’re you doing?”

“I paid for unlimited access for a month, didn’t I?” He pulls the Velcro straps with his teeth and slap them shut tight. “And I’m not working today, so I can work on this instead.”

He walks up to the best heavy bag in the gym, the one with a nice sweet spot many fists had sought and dug out.

“You can’t outmatch Frank in strength,” says Matt as he starts working the bag, “you wanna beat him, think _fast_.”

“I’ll move on to the swerve ball,” says Marc. “Don’t you have anything better to do than watch me sweat?” He pauses, catches his breath. “I mean—”

He turns to see Matt walking to him with another pair of the gym’s gloves. “I don’t have a mouthguard or any protective gears, so let’s just stop short of love taps, okay?”

Marc blinks. And blinks again.

“Murdock, what are you— _what are you doing_?”

Matt takes off his shades and put them on the ground with his cane. He slips the gloves on one by one. “If you can keep up with me you’d be able to manage Frank.” He spreads his arms and grins. “The operative word being ‘if’.”

“C’mon man, I can’t punch at you! Your dad would kill me if he finds out!”

“The only one who’s here is Kenny and he’s…” he turns to the direction of the office, “he’s snoring off his hair of the dog right now. If you don’t tell my dad, he’d never know.”

Marc steps back into the bag, and then he gets it. This is a joke. So he laughs. But Matt’s not laughing with him.

“If you don’t take a shot now I will.”

Marc’s still laughing when the flash of black that is Matt’s fist stops just before his left cheek. He looks at the glove and then brushes it away.

“Okay,” he says, “Okay, let’s take it to the ring.”

You’re crazy, he’s screaming to himself. If anyone ever finds out you were beating up a blind kid in an empty gym your pro-life would be over before it even begins. Is he really blind? another part of him shouts. Look at his eyes, you moron, he’s really blind, you’re dead, kiss your boxing career goodbye.

“Why am I doing this?” he moans under his breath as he slips under the ropes.

“Because you don’t see me as weak,” says Matt, already standing in the centre of the ring, “and also because you need the practice just as much as I need the exercise.”

“How are you doing that?” hisses Marc.

Matt’s stance is less of a boxing stance than a balanced pose with each hand protecting his face and body respectively. He’s not a boxer, Marc thinks. This is not going to be a boxing fight.  

 “Make me tell you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only time Marc’s reminded of Matt’s blindness is when he looks into his eyes and realises he can’t read anything from them. The way he moves makes it seem like Marc’s the blind one; he’s fast, and he’s unreadable. He also fights dirty; he’s just swept Marc’s feet off as he ducks his hook.

“What the hell?!” says Marc as he picks himself up from the ground. “That’s illegal, that’s beyond illegal, that’s cheating, that’s immoral!”

“I’m sorry,” says Matt, laughing. “I got carried away. Didn’t I tell you Dad didn’t want me to box?”

“And what, you learned to brawl?”

“I learned to improvise.” He takes off his gloves. “And now that one of us has got his butt on the floor I think it’s time for a break.”

He throws at Marc his water bottle from the foot of the ring. It’s only when Marc’s squirting blessed cool water into his parched throat does he remember that that very act of throwing demands a rigorous explanation.

Matt comes and sits next to him. “If you’re curious, I learned to fight from sneaking into my dad’s old gym and copying whatever I’d watched. And then I… found a teacher who—”

The words spill out of him before he can stop them. “Are you a mutant?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s rude, Matt thinks, crossing his arms. He wasn’t born this way, this isn’t a genetic thing. Or maybe it is, but that’s because of the chemicals that spilled on him. But it’s not a mutant thing. It can’t be.

(What you’re trying to say, Murdock, is that you haven’t got a clue, and it terrifies you.)

Marc’s probably just realised how rude he is because he’s blabbering about how he’s okay with mutants and how he won’t report him to anyone. He lets him get his Decent Person Qualifications out into the open, buying himself two more minutes to think this through.

He’s never told anyone before. God he’s come close, he’s come so close so many times. You don’t need your sight to see people’s pity—it hits you like an anvil and it brings you down flat to the ground.

(When someone talks to him slowly and loudly, when someone stops him in the middle of the street to ask him if he needs help getting somewhere, when someone tries to order his food for him, when someone asks him in the toilet if everything is okay, when…)

The accident gave him radar sense and enhanced senses but unfortunately it didn’t give him enhanced patience or tolerance for other people’s condescending bullshit.

Spector’s at the part where he lists off potential mutant friends, although he doesn’t know for sure, but everyone kind of suspects them, and he remains friends with them anyway. Matt allows himself a chuckle at this—none of them is probably a mutant, none of them is probably real (there’s no way someone like him would have as many friends as he’s listing off).

“I’m not a mutant.”

(I think).

Marc’s heart beat and breathing slowed down, but Matt could detect doubt and disbelief in his next words. “But are you really—”

“I’m blind, Spector, I’m legally, medically, totally blind.”

It’s his fault for showing off in front of him. But it feels so good, oh man, it feels so good to put down his shades and cane, to stop hiding, to shed off weak blind Matthew Murdock and let the kid who fought off the bullies all by himself out again. The Daredevil Matthew Murdock.  He’s so glad he’s still there, because things have a way of disappearing if it stays hidden for too long.

Can he trust him?

“Can I trust you?” he knows where to find Marc’s eyes and he holds his stare in that direction. “I’ve never told anyone this, I’ve never even told my dad.” His dad who hates the Daredevil Matthew Murdock. His dad who’s the first and last person he’d want to know about his gifts.

His radar sense tells him Marc is nodding before he remembers to vocally express his affirmation.

He takes a deep breath.

  1. When he lost his sight in an accident involving an old man, a truck, and chemicals from that truck, he also gained the following.
  2. Enhanced senses
    1. His sense of smell, _ie_ he can smell his deodorant, and from years of smelling deodorant he can tell him what exact brand he’s wearing (Degree v12 Absolute Protection)
    2. His hearing, _ie_ he can hear Kenny’s snoring and his drool dripping onto the table
    3. His sense of touch, _ie_ he can trace the raised ink of the letters embossed onto this glove to read them (“Everlast”)



“Gee, what are the chances this boxing glove will have ‘Everlast’ branded on it!” says Marc.

Matt puts his hand on his wrist. “I can feel the muscular knots and the slight heat given off when blood flows more rapidly in an enlarged vessel.” He squeezes it and Marc gasps.

“That also means I’m great at massages.”

               d. His sense of taste,  _ie_

“If I lick a drop of your sweat right now I can probably tell you what brand of energy drink you just drank.”

Marc scoots a little bit further away. “Don’t you dare!”

     3. Radar Sense

               a. Something in his brain sends out waves of something 360o around him  


               b. Waves hit something; bounce back

               c. Brain captures bounced waves, sketch out his surroundings

               d. Does this constantly within splits of seconds

“So you’re like a—”

“A bat, yeah.”

“I was about to say a blue whale.”

     4. Enhanced sense of balance

Marc raises his hand. “Isn’t this the result of an enhanced sense of hearing and touch?” He shrugs. “Surprised I’m not as dumb as I look—er, smell or sound or whatever?”

“Blue whale?”

“It does have echolocation! And it’s the biggest extant living thing on earth!”

“I just don’t think it’s a very flattering comparison.”

“As opposed to a _bat_?” Marc laughs. “Did you want me to call you Batman?”

Matt grimaces and they laugh together. He leans back to rest on his palms and turns to the ceiling. He lets the sunlight filtering through the dusty moldy glass panel to caress his cheeks. His sweat has almost entirely disappeared in the time he takes to reveal to his sparring partner his secret.

“Don’t tell anyone. Especially my dad.”

“I won’t.” Marc pauses. “I’d have thought your dad would be pleased like hell if he knew.”

Matt faces down and plays with the Velcro strap of his glove. When he was a kid sneaking into his dad’s old gym he wanted nothing more than to be able to fit into one of these. When his dad was out he’d sneak into his locker and put on his gloves, but they were too big to fit his hands even after he’d pulled the laces as tight as he possibly could. When his dad had found him in them he’d ripped them off from his hands and thrown them across the room.

This isn’t your life, Matty, his dad had said. Please, I’m sorry, but this isn’t your life, please don’t do this ever again.

“Nah,” says Matt.

Sometimes he wonders if his dad is secretly happier that he’s blind. Maybe that’s why he drinks in the middle of the night and goes to his room and sobs mangled _sorry’s_  into his hands while he tries his best to keep his breathing steady and pretends he’s still asleep.

“No, it’s best he doesn’t know.”


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone else grows up but the wannabe fighter

He’s moved away from Kenny to a spot behind the tables across the room. This way, he’s behind the spotlights and he doesn’t have to deal with their sweltering heat, and he’s also spared Kenny’s running commentary which does him no favour whatsoever. It’s a sensory overload for him in this ballroom-turned-fight room: the coaches and supporters shouting from the sidelines; the tinkles of the cutleries against fine china plates; the squeaking of boots against the canvas of the ring; the squelchy noise of leather meeting flesh; the rattling of the skull and the neck bones that come just after that; the smell of sweat and rubber and blood and antibiotic cream mixing with that of medium-rare steak and fruity-with-a-hint-of-spiciness Chardonnay; and every five minutes a dozen automatic air fresheners around the room would spray old-pine-after-the-rain into this cocktail. Kenny’s incessant chattering only gave him a headache, especially because he could tell perfectly what was happening in the ring (and also in the room; there’s a waiter two tables down with loose shoelaces who’s an accident waiting for happen, but he can’t muster enough pity to warn these rich people dining on tenderized flesh as his friends get theirs pummelled just a few feet away).

He’s taken off his shades and folded his cane into his coat--he doesn’t want anyone to bother him about watching the fight, and he knows neither his dad nor Kenny would be able to spot him here, in the shadows behind the spotlights (the pocket of coolness behind the intense blasts of heat to his senses). A seeing person would be bothered by the tall bulky spotlights and the tables blocking their view, but not Matt.

The bell goes off and the fighters return to their corners. He can hear what his dad is whispering to Marc while he pours water into his mouth and massages his shoulders and arms. You’re leading on points, sonny, all you gotta do is play is safe this round, keep outta his reach, he can’t even chase you anymore, you’ve really done a number on him.

A boxer’s breath in between rounds smells coppery from the blood, bitter from the bile, and sour from the saliva coagulating in the mouth-piece. He can only smell a hint of that from where he’s standing, but he’s familiar with it (minus the blood, most of the time) from hanging around during sparring sessions in the gym.

There’s a crash and a shriek; the waiter has tripped and served the Chardonnay on a lady. Matt  hopes she isn’t wearing white. He hears his dad telling Marc what's happened with a chuckle. He knows he isn’t listening. He lost Marc’s heartbeat when he’s gone to the corner surrounded by other people whose pulses are deafening rapid drum beats, but he’s watched Marc spar enough times to know what he’s like when he’s fighting: he throws himself into it, but not like a hound who’s gotten a smell of blood. His heart beats fast, but it beats steady. He was surprised that Marc isn’t as reckless in the ring as he is in real life: his punches are calculated, and his defense game is top-notch. He’s lost in the fight like a dedicated method actor’s lost in his character.

He isn’t like, say, Castle, who’s famous for his cool head and brilliant strategies. But Matt can see what everyone else is blind to: Castle’s bloodlust hangs like a layer of ice over a window in winter in his demeanour. His heart beat marches _forcefully steadily_ , it reminds him of a Tupperware of water being heated in the microwave with the lid jammed and taped tight. He wonders in every fight Castle’s in if this is when that Tupperware would finally explode.

The bell dings again and his dad slaps Marc on the shoulder (latex surgical glove bouncing off skin slick with sweat makes a sharp fart-like noise) and off he goes. It takes only ten seconds for his dad to start shouting exasperatedly at Marc, for not only has he switched to the southpaw stance he’s been stubbornly practicing despite everyone else’s advice to the contrary, he’s also let himself be backed onto the ropes. Matt bites back a smirk. The main reason why no one else can see Marc’s strategic mind is because he takes stupid risks, sets up difficult counters, and loves fighting back from the corners. This idiot gets off from making his life hard.

He hears his dad shout, two more minutes, Marc, keep your hands up, keep moving your head, and he knows it’s time to make his way back to Kenny’s side with a toilet-based excuse. He puts on his shades when he’s a few seats away from him.

“I was starting to get worried, boyo,” says Kenny without turning away from the ring. “How’d I explain to your dad if I’d lost you?”

Matt makes himself face a direction a few degrees off the ring (where the intense heat from the spotlight is focused on, surrounded by thunderous heartbeats surpassed in pace only by those of the two figures at the centre). “Sorry. That meatball sub was a terrible mistake,” he replies.

“How’s Marc doing?”

“Better than the other guy. I thought it was going to be over two rounds back when Spector got him with a clean uppercut to the jaw, but he got up. Wonder what kind of skull he’s got.”

Matt remembers that uppercut. He remembers the snap of the lower jaw against the rest of the skull, the guy’s heart’s pregnant pause from the shock, the dull thump of a hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, flesh and sweat dropping onto the canvas.

“Nothing much happening now, Spector’s jabbing, stepping out, Singh’s keeping it tight--”

“Hey, Kenny, my stomach’s not really agreeing with too much noise right now, so you don’t have to trouble yourself with the commentaries.”

Kenny turns to him and nods. “I get you, boyo, not everyone can stomach boxing fights.”

Matt faces down and bites his lips to keep himself from correcting him, and also to make it seem like he’s in the clutches of another wave of stomach aches.

“You’re meant for another kind of fight, eh, courtroom fights, lawyer fights! Now those I can’t stomach, so don’t you feel bad, Matt, eh?”

Matt keeps his head down. “I’ve only declared a pre-law major, Kenny. I still have to get to law school, and then pass the bar to actually become a lawyer.” That is, if I do want to be a lawyer, he adds mentally. He doesn’t voice aloud his indecision--he’s pretty sure the only reason why his dad finally allows him to attend fights is because of this perceived set path in life, a set path that is the exact opposite of his dad’s, a set path that is the exact wish of his dad’s for him.

You’re a chip off the old block, Matty, his dad had said when he’d called him from school about being one of the first in his batch to declare a major, you’re gonna be a fighter just like me, you’re gonna fight the good fight in handsome suits with pretty flowery language rolling off your tongue, you’re gonna show them all that you’re a fighter just like me.

The bell dings. Amidst the excited gibberish noises around the ring he makes out his dad yelling thirty seconds left, sonny, I’m proud of you.

“Well, that’s that then,” says Kenny as he relaxes into his chair. “Singh looks like he can’t even lift his hands anymore. This is a done fight.”

Matt looks up. He couldn’t help the “you idiot” escaping as a hiss from his mouth because said idiot up there on the ring is about to fall for the simple trick of a double jab spaced with a slip, that second jab weighed by desperation and blind hope and also more body weight than usual because Singh is so dizzy he will fall forward with his jab. He recovers from his lucky shot faster than Marc and makes good of his blessing by throwing a couple of good ol’ hooks and Matt knows before Marc reaches the ground that he’s already gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His dad goes to the living room to read the papers and whatever book he’s got after dinner. Both he and Randall usually go to their respective rooms to find something to occupy themselves with since it’s an unspoken rule that the TV will be off when their dad is in there. Tonight, though, Marc lingers near the tall shelves that divide the dining room from the living room after dinner. He fiddles with his phone, scrolling right and left on the homepages without really looking at anything. A post-it app on one of the pages says ‘8 AM in front of gym + form’.

“I’m going to be out the entire day tomorrow.”

From the corner of his eyes he can see his dad lowering the paper a little bit to peer over it.

“Where are you going?”

He had thought of the lie from the moment Jack told him of the fight. “I’m taking an extra shift at work for a friend. His grandma died and he has to go back to Kentucky for her funeral.”

“That’s good.” Pause. “Will you miss dinner?”

“Yeah,” he says, still flicking back and forth on his homepages. He stops and looks at the crease on the middle of the paper, a line pointing to his dad’s long index finger. “I’ll get food outside, so don’t worry about me.”

“Stay safe,” his dad says before flipping another page of the paper. Marc heads back to his room and throws his phone onto his bed, the screen lighting up from the impact. He sees the post-it app and goes to his bag to take out a piece of paper folded into four. He finds a pen in his drawer, twirls it in his fingers and clicks it with his chin. He signs his dad’s curly signature and folds the paper again before putting it back into his bag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s surprised to find himself kissing the canvas. He brings his hands beside his chest and tries to lift himself up. Something cream is moving across his field of vision--a pair of hands? His ears feel like they’re submerged under the ocean with big waves rolling above him. Wait, that something cream was a pair of index fingers, oh yeah, he was boxing, he was winning, and, shit, wait, I’m up, he croaks, but his knee keeps slipping on the slippery canvas and he kisses it again and again.

The throbbing pain on the sides of his head sets in after Jack and a team of doctors got him to his corner. He realises from the ache of his molars that he’s no longer biting on his mouthpiece--he doesn’t even have it in his person. Someone is pulling on his eyelid and shining a torchlight at his eye; he squirms, blinks the dark circles away. Someone else is poking at his bruises with a cotton bud. It tickles and stings. His left eye is swollen shut. His knuckles feel heavy and hot and he picks at the tape on the wrist of his right glove with the other.

“Jack,” he says, just as Jack lifts his chin up and pours water into his mouth. He coughs, shakes his head. “Jack, I’m--”

“S’alright, Marc, freak accidents happen,” says Jack. His face is coming into focus now. “I don’t know if you can see Singh from here but he looks like he’s in a worse shape than you are.”

“He didn’t get knocked out.”

“Dumb luck. If it had gone onto decision, you would’ve won by a landslide.”

“But I didn’t.”

Someone’s gotten his gloves off. His white wraps are heavy with his sweat.

His fingers are aching and they’re cold from the sudden exposure to the ballroom’s air-con. Jack doesn’t seem to mind when he brushes against them to grab hold of him at the wrists.

“It was a good fight, wasn’t it?”

Marc swallows the ball of saliva that wouldn’t slide smoothly down his dry throat. He nods.

“And you had fun?”

He nods again. “Except for the, y’know.” He mimes punches to his head weakly.

They share a chuckle and Jack lets go of his hands. “You fought good, kid, better than for someone only on his fourth amateur fight. You see those people there, they were really impressed by you.”

“I thought they were impressed with their steak.” His mind wanders to a slab of raw steak, cold from the freezer, dripping with juice. He’s going to put one on his eye when he gets home in the darkness of his kitchen, sitting on a chair he’d have quietly pulled to read whatever he can find on his phone while the steak defrost on his face.

“Well, _I_ was impressed,” says Jack. He ruffles his hair, which sticks up from the sweat. “Said it before but--I’m proud of you.”

He didn’t hear it quite clearly the first time during the fight. He’s glad he didn’t imagine that.

“Doc’s given you a clean bill of health, so let’s get outta here.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marc’s favourite bag is long and heavy, but soft at its duct-taped centre. Better to keep my hands safe to punch real people than to wreck them trying to be all macho on dumb bags, he told Matt before. Matt, on the other hand, is surprised that that bag is still there. All the bags in his dad’s gym are old and beaten up, but that bag has got to be a prime candidate for replacement; it can only be duct-taped so many times to keep its stuffing from poking out.

The cold November air blows from the slit below the locked back door near Marc’s bag. “You’re already training?” says Matt. He reaches for his face. “Pretty shiner. If I were a doctor I’d  recommend some rest but what do you know, I’m not.”

Marc jerks his head away from his hand. “You’re still here?”

“It’s Thanksgiving break. I get the week off and I thought I’d spend it back home. Don’t mind me if my presence bothers you that much, I’m only here to remind my dad to get the turkey for tomorrow because he’s forgotten to charge his phone last night.”

“Thanksgiv--oh yeah, tomorrow’s Thursday.” He jabs at the bag slowly and softly. “I hear you’re doing law. Jack wouldn’t shut up about it.”

Matt sighs. “Pre-law. It’s your standard liberal arts college education with a fancy name. If I don’t go to law school after this, I’d be as unemployable as everyone else.”

“Hah,” says Marc, now leaning against his bag. “You’re going to go to law school, though.”

His radar sense sketches out his dad seating in his little office leafing through a stack of paper. Kenny’s near the main doors saying byes and happy Thanksgivings to the few students who were still lingering.

“Yeah.” He puts his cane down and punches at the bag softly with his bare hands: jab, jab, cross, roll, jab, cross, hook.

“Keep your right hand up,” says Marc.

“I’m not a boxer,” says Matt, but he does the combo again, this time keeping his right hand close to his cheek.

There’s a series of loud ripping sounds; Marc’s opening the Velcro straps of his bag gloves. “Oh no, you’re Mr Future Hotshot Lawyer.”

“Don’t say that.” Jab, jab, cross, roll, jab, cross, hook, slip, hook.

“Mr Everyone’s Dream Son.”

Matt pauses in the middle of his combo at that. He senses the hand flying towards his cheek and he raises his right hand to block it.

“Keep your right hand up,” says Marc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey, Marc?”

He looks up from his phone to find Randall’s head peeking through his bedroom door.

“Jeez, Rand, why can’t you knock?”

“Sorry,” says Randall. There’s a knock on the door and Rand’s floating head grins toothily at him. Marc sighs and waves him in. Randall closes the door behind him quietly and hops onto the bed butt first.

Marc picks up his phone and leans back into his pillow. He can feel Rand’s stare on him.

“What?” he says after a couple of minutes of silence.

“You can tell me, y’know. I’ll keep your secret for you.”

He drops his phone to his thigh again. “What?”

Rand points to his own eye. He’s still grinning.

“Are you in a gang?”

Marc narrows his one good eye (his swollen one is already at its narrowest). “No.”

“Have you got a girlfriend?”

He can’t help but bark out a chuckle. “How does this,” he says, pointing to the swollen eye, “relate to having a girlfriend?”

Rand shrugs. “But have you got a girlfriend?”

“Not now.”

“A boyfriend?”

Marc chokes on his next breath. “Randall!” he wheezes.

“I’m not prejudiced, y’know!”

“How do you know such a big word?”

Rand throws him a sharp look. “Marc, I’m twelve.” He drops the look and smiles again. “So, have you?”

“No!”

Rand leans back and drops lying down onto the bed. He pokes at Marc’s calf with his sock-clad foot. “So what is it? Is it something cool? Can you give me a clue? Does it start with an A?”

Marc glances down for a second. He keeps his new Title Platinum gloves under his bed along with his wraps. He stuffs his gloves with newspaper and he sneaks his wraps in the laundry every week to prevent them from stinking and revealing their whereabouts to his brother and father.

“Has Dad said anything?”

Rand shoots up to a sitting position. “Does he know?”

“No.”

“Good, because that would’ve been soooo unfair.” He scrunches his face. “And really weird for you.”

Marc reaches out to pat his brother’s hair. “I don’t think Dad would care even if he knew.”

Randall ducks out of his hand. He pouts. “Why would you say that?”

Because we both know I’m a failure for a son and none of us cares anymore. “Because--you’re really annoying, you know that?”

“And if you think that Dad wouldn’t care,” Rand continues, ignoring him, “why won’t you tell him?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving dinner for two means there will be a lot of leftovers, so Jack has gotten into a habit of organising a meal for his students even before he had his own gym. A lot of them would bring something from their own stash of Thanksgiving leftovers, and Jack would end up with even more food than when he started. He’d donate it to the local church which runs a soup kitchen for the homeless. The priest would thank him and make a jibe about him being a Submarine Catholic and Jack would laugh and only Matt can hear the guilt dripping off his loud, wild laughter.

It’s a warm Friday, so they have decided to go through with the picnic idea in the park after all. A lot of Jack’s students are over-aged; there were two box coolers full of beer and lager, and in no time at all they have been emptied. With four crushed cans beside him on the grass, Jack definitely contributed to the rapid disappearance of the alcohol. Intoxication and contentment feel the same way to Matt--they cause for warm pulses to radiate from the very pores of the person which would bathe over his senses.

(But Matt knows of too many times when intoxication is the furthest thing from contentment; he’d keep as quiet and still as he can until he no longer senses those warm radiating pulses.)

“I guess Spector doesn’t stick to kosher,” says Jack as Marc walks past with a plate that smells of bacon and cheese and broccoli.

Matt turns to face at his dad’s direction. “Why do you think he does?”

“Oh, I’ve heard of his dad--an Elias Spector, I believe? I’ve never seen him before, but I know that he’s a rabbi and a scholar at the Jewish institute. And I hear he’s as Orthodox as you get in New York.” Jack pauses. “Does he ever talk about his family to you?”

He shakes his head.

“Hm.”

Matt's back is against the tree while his shoulder is against his dad's arm. He closes his eyes behind his shades. He imagines the light filtering through the tree above him dancing on the Columbia sweatshirt he's wearing as the leaves shake in the gentle breeze. He can feel the heat on the bare skin of his face tracing the light which dots fragments and patterns, leaving his cheeks warm for the wind to sting with it's late November chill.

When his dad speaks the rumbling his voice vibrates through his arm into his body and shakes his chest. His dad speaks lazily and he replies lazily. The smell of the alcohol on his breath; the minty smell of the aftershave clinging to his chin; the earthy smell of fallen leaves; the riot of smell that is the banquet of warmed up leftovers; the cacophony of smell that is New York hinting in the background; he wonders if he would smell like a composite of all these things. They smell so strong to him, he's sure they would always linger on him like how the smell of freshly baked  cookies would linger throughout your house, digging into your shirt, your hair, and the pores of your skin.

His dad's arm is hard like the tree, but it's not as ridged and rough, and not as cold. He can feel the steady beating of his pulse (blood smashing against the walls of the arteries of his arm with each contraction of the heart), the warm rush of the blood, but not the rush of water and starch under the bark of the tree. It's probably an old tree, with inches of bark circling its core. He pictures the leaves above him, the ones through which the warm sunlight is filtering through; their veins would be outlined by the silver of the light while they stand dark against the papery green, yellow and red of the leaves. He pictures the red leaves to be as red as his and his dad's hair.

"Here comes the man of the moment," says his dad in a louder voice, and then, even louder still: "Castle! Hey, Castle! Frank! C'mere!"

Frank approaches them with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. He smells like roast turkey, cranberry sauce and the magic balm Jack's got for his fighters to put on their bruises and aching muscles and joints after a fight (eucalyptus oil and mint).

"Coach," says Frank, nodding at his dad. He turns to him next. "Matt."

"I don't see you eating enough for someone who's about to eat army rations for a while," says his dad. "Don't feel bad, sonny, eat as much as you want. This is as much as your farewell party as it is a thanksgiving one."

"You're enlisting?" says Matt.

"Marines."

"Shi-oot, did I forget to tell you, Matty? Frank's leaving in three days to fight the good fight."

"You mean our country's ill-defined war on an ideology that's fueled by this very war?"

His dad nudges him on the cheek with his arm. "Frank's going to help keep the world safe."

Matt doesn't want to make his dad feel more awkward in front of Frank so he shuts up. He still rolls his eyes behind his shades.

Frank's heartbeat has remained steady throughout the exchange. Matt wonders if he doesn't care about other people's opinions on the war. Or if he doesn't care, period.

Jack sends Frank marching away with an order to eat at least two more full plates of food and to wash it down with the excellent apple cider Bobby's mom had made by the gallons. Matt still has a bit of said apple cider left in the paper cup beside his knee. His dad reminds him of it and he downs it in one gulp.

"I'm glad to see him enlist," says his dad, in a much lower and softer voice now. "The army and the war will give him what he needs. They'll also give him codes and rules and laws he'll have to live by. And he will follow them. He needs them as much as he needs the violence."

Matt thinks about the Tupperware in the microwave.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that, Matty," says Jack and the arm he's leaning on snakes to his far shoulder and pulls him closer to his chest so that now his cheek brushes against the slippery polyester of his dad's windbreaker and the cold jagged teeth of the zipper.

The apple cider's pleasantly sweet but it leaves a slight bitter aftertaste on the tongue.

"And there goes Spector with another very much non-kosher plate," says his dad, laughing. "Makes you wonder if his dad knows." Matt senses him turning around to look at them very briefly before walking to the direction of the dispenser containing the apple cider.

He slides off his dad's chest and leans back again half against the tree, half against his dad's arm. He doesn't rest there long, because soon his dad has started calling and waving for Marc to come to them. He sits upright.

"Hey, Coach. Matt," says Marc when he's standing in front of their mat. His dad motions for him to sit down and he does, sitting perpendicular to them with his legs stretched so that his trainers are outside the mat. He sets his plate and his cup down; a few drops of apple cider fall onto the mat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt doesn't try to touch his face when he's with his dad. He knows he's curious as fuck when Jack says, "Your eye's lookin' good." That's what Matt's like: he has to see everything.

He doesn't throw any bone at Matt. He replies a thank you to Jack and shovels the casserole into his mouth.

He's eating so much he probably wouldn't be able to eat dinner. A part of him says he can jog home after this to work up an appetite. His stomach says he's going nowhere fast anytime soon, especially after plopping down on the mat.

"You heard about Castle?" says Matt.

"About what? His new girlfriend?" says Marc.

"He's enlisting in the Marines."

Marc shrugs. "That's old news."

"Wow, I guess I'm the last one to know, huh?" says Matt. Jack pats his hand and whispers a sorry.

"That's 'cuz you're busy being Mr Future Hotshot Lawyer away from here," says Marc. He watches Jack chuckle at the name and how his chest silently swells with pride. "Anyway, you're better off than Castle's girl. Everyone knows she doesn't know yet."

"Speaking of girlfriends," says Jack, nudging at Matt. Matt makes a face.

"Dad, we've been over this."

"But we're not done with it. How 'bout you, Marc? Any significant other in your life?"

Whenever Marc thinks about the girls he's dated he thinks of empty parking lots at night and the disabled toilet stalls in fast food joints and petrol kiosks.

He also thinks of Randall with his pale mop of a hair grinning toothily pointing at his own eye.

He shakes his head.

"Still an eligible bachelor then?" says Matt with a grin.

"More eligible than you."

"If you tweak the criteria, sure."

"Boys, boys," says Jack, laughing his unrestrained loud laughter. "Say, Marc, how's your father doing?"

Marc takes his time to reply. He takes a long swig of his apple cider. "He's fine." His heart starts beating fast. Matt perks up a little. That little shit, nothing gets past him. "Do you know him?"

"No, I've only heard of him.” His breathing slows down. “Do you still live with him?"

He bends down to pick up his plate and hides his cheeks. "Uh, yeah. I'm moving out soon once I find a proper job, and y'know, if I can fight on a regular basis."

"No college plans?"

He still has 7 months left to work his way out of his and his dad's deal. "I wanna be a fighter, man."

"You can study and fight at the same time."

"Not with the thought of hundreds of thousdands of dollars of student debt and an ultimately useless degree," says Marc. "Not everyone can get scholarships, much less full ones."

Matt is fiddling with his empty paper cup.

Jack drops the subject but picks up a previous one. "Your dad hasn't been to any of your fights, has he?"

"Nah, he's busy."

"Even during the weekends?"

His dad spends the weekend in the synagogue or reading in their living room. "Yeah." He waves his hand and the fork he's holding shoots out flakes of casserole. "But I'll make him come one day, maybe for my first pro fight, or when it's a nice card, with a fancy venue and pretty ring girls and lots of fight money." He can't help the small smile tugging at his lips. "I'll surprise him. So if you ever see him, Coach, don't tell him about me and fighting.

"Don't tell my dad, okay?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for coping with me ;; The next chapter is going to be the last one, I think!


End file.
